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Video can help learners understand complex concepts which are difficult to explain with simple text and graphics. Furthermore, videos have visual appeal that can evoke emotional reactions from students, which can help increase students’ interests and their learning motivation (Hartsell & Yuen, 2006). It has been found that video is among the top six technologies currently used by university professors (Brill & Galloway, 2007) and it conveys the highest amount of enjoyment (Tang & Austin, 2009). Moreover, educational institutions are witnessing a profound increase in the use of web tools for education. For example, blogs can serve as a reflective platform in the training processes for student teachers (Yang, 2009). Online discussion forums serve as tools for promoting higher-order thinking (McLoughlin & Mynard, 2009). Overall, the Internet has become an increasingly popular tool for instruction (Tang & Austin, 2009).
The web is also the largest library and laboratory, offering many interesting and exciting ways to acquire instructional information and learning resources (Neo, 2003), and recent researchers have addressed the educational potential of web videos. For example, web video plays an important role in delivering course materials to online learners as learning online becomes a more common practice in education (Hartsell & Yuen, 2006). Web videos of Web 2.0 can be utilized as cognitive tools to guide and support students’ learning activities in the classroom when they have access to video sources in constructive settings (Krauskopf, Zahn, & Hesse, 2012). Haga and Kaneda (2005) combined video and bulletin board systems to help students understand the discussion and the lecture more deeply. On the other hand, the searching and downloading of published online teaching resources is a common practice among teachers (Dooly, 2009). Thus it is worth exploring the type of web videos that are possible to be adopted in classroom and how they affect students’ learning.
According to the literature, using web videos for teaching involves issues of technology, pedagogy, and curriculum content. In the technical aspect, the web video is associated with the bulletin board for deeper understanding of a lecture (Haga & Kaneda, 2005). Pedagogy can use the web video for idea-sharing and for supporting productive discussion (Borko, Jacobs, Eiteljorg, & Pittman, 2008). In terms of curriculum content, web videos can record teachers’ lectures for students’ self-learning in distance education. These different issues, however are interrelated with each others. Ting and Tai (2012a) argue that using the web video in education is not a trivial issue from the aspect of technology, pedagogy, and curriculum content.
In the aspect of student use, the popularization of home computers and broadband network connection have increased students’ extracurricular use, including activities not linked to study-related tasks. Home computer use and Internet access undoubtedly encourage the acquisition and utilization of web resources, contributing to the possible development of valuable teaching and learning strategies for in-school learning (Kuhlemeier & Hemker, 2007). The web environments that students are familiar with in their leisure life and the attitudes that they construct toward resources available in the web may mediate their attitude toward the web resources demonstrated in the classroom (Sharples, Milrad, Arnedillo, & Vavoula, 2007).